Less Than Murder When Jesse Boulerice laid out Andrew Long with a vicious high stick, was it just hockey, or something much worse?

Something terrible is about to happen. There, in theupper-left-hand corner of the screen. Behind the goal and a stepto the left. The videotape is probably a copy of a copy of acopy, as grainy as a Navajo sand painting. A hockey game. Thecamera pans too fast, too slow, chasing knots of players backand forth across the ice. Medium wide-angle coverage, verylikely shot from the press box, panning blue line to blue line,blue line to crease, blue line to blue line. It looks like teamtape, overbright and jittery, something coaches use to showplayers how a penalty kill broke down or to mock theirclay-footedness on a breakaway. The date--apr.17.1998--appearsacross the bottom of the screen.

You've been told about the incident, so you know what to lookfor, and where. You think you know how bad it's going to be. Thecamera pans left and then rests, showing an area from the blueline to the goal. A clumsy rush forms and dissolves, and ablocked shot shakes the puck loose. It squibs into the corner,left of the goal. Two men skate in on it. They look small, butthey aren't. The white jersey gets to the boards first; blackjersey vectors in a second later, delivering a cross-check tothe back, left elbow high. The puck slides past them and iscleared up the ice. White jersey turns, gives black jersey ashove, and they both glide toward the net. They are three feetfrom each other, no more, the black jersey a step nearer thegoal. They pause for a second or two, the time it takes to readfrom here to here. But the moment seems to stretch on and on,elongated and made dense by the number of possibilities itcontains.

Then it happens. White jersey lifts his stick and swings it hardat the head of the player in the black jersey. The long, flatarc of the swing drives the heel of the stick into his face, andhe goes down. Goes down like an empty suit of clothes dropped tothe floor. Goes down and stays down. The player in white standsover him as the camera pans away to the right. The tape abruptlycuts to a shot of the scoreboard.

This is a sports story in which no one wins. Everyone involvedhas already lost, and all that's left is the reckoning.

WHO YA GONNA BELIEVE?

From hockey officials, on the record: "I didn't see it."

From officials, off the record: "The worst thing I've ever seen."

THE SYNOPSIS

On Friday, April 17, 1998, during an Ontario Hockey Leagueplayoff game at the Compuware Sports Arena in Plymouth, Mich.,19-year-old Jesse Boulerice (pronounced BOWL-er-iss) swung hisstick into the face of 19-year-old Andrew Long. That fact is notin dispute. It is, after all, on videotape. Jesse was in whitejersey number 18; Andrew wore black jersey number 19. It wasearly in the first period of the fourth game of a seven-gameseries. Jesse's team, the Plymouth Whalers, was down three gamesto none. Andrew's team, the Guelph Storm (pronounced GWELF), wason the verge of advancing through the divisional eliminationstoward Canada's lesser grail, Major Junior hockey's Memorial Cup.

When Jesse swung his stick, he produced immediate consequencesfor Andrew: a broken nose, multiple facial fractures, a GradeIII concussion accompanied by seizure, a contusion of the brain,two black eyes and a gash in his upper lip the size of ahandlebar mustache. Had the stick landed a hand's width higheror lower, Andrew might have been killed.

The consequences for Jesse, arriving more slowly but with agrinding weight and gravity of their own, have been these: aone-year suspension from the OHL and a suspension from theAmerican Hockey League, his next step up the professional hockeyladder, that ended last Nov. 15. He has also been charged by theWayne County (Mich.) Prosecutors Office with a felony: assaultwith intent to do great bodily harm less than murder. Aconviction could carry a $5,000 fine and 10 years in prison.

For every action there is an equal and opposite reaction. Theseare the applied physics of violence. Arc and acceleration, causeand effect. Swing a hockey stick hard enough, and you can bringthe world down on yourself.

A QUESTION OF FACT

On April 30, at the Toronto Marriott Hotel, the OHL held ahearing on what it called the Jesse Boulerice/Andrew LongMatter. The video was reviewed. Reports were taken from gameofficials, coaches, the players and their agents. Jesse andAndrew were interviewed separately and did not talk to each other.

The OHL's confidential 35-page report is largely what you'dexpect: witnesses explaining what they saw, agents and coachesspeaking about the character of their players and theviciousness or the unintentional nature of the hit. A fewintriguing points emerge. The first is he had broken his righthand several games before the Guelph series, and he was wearinga playing cast on the night he swung that stick. The OHL reportsays Jesse was on painkillers that night, but no conclusions aredrawn as to how that might have affected his behavior. Alsointeresting are these questions to Jesse regarding what he saidas he was led off the ice that night.

Question: Do you recall the statement allegedly made by yourselfto Referee [Pat] Smola, "You didn't even see what happened"?

Answer: I knew what I did was wrong--I was upset--I was not surewhat else I should be saying.

Question: Do you recall the statement to linesman [Steve] Miller,"but Smola did not see what I did"?

Answer: I knew what I did was wrong and I was not sure what Ishould be saying or doing.

It could be argued that Jesse had checked to see where thereferee was looking before he hit Andrew. Prosecutors expect toseize on this when the case goes to trial.

OTHER THINGS JESSE SAID ON APRIL 30

"When I went into the boards, my hand got crushed."

"I have been picturing the incident ever since."

"I never meant to hurt him like that."

SOME THINGS ANDREW SAID ON APRIL 30

"All I want to know is why."

"I don't understand why [he] would do that."

"I don't understand why."

WHAT IT ALL MEANS, PART I

So far the story unspools the way these stories always do: goodguy-bad guy, right-wrong, black-white. You don't have to readpast the headline to know what happened and form an opinion. Itis another tidy front-page morality play that teaches thekiddies a valuable lesson in sportsmanship before working itsway backward through the newspaper until it evaporatescompletely. Seen out of the corner of your eye among the NBA boxscores and the strip-joint ads and the PGA Tour money list, thestory is just another messy collision between sports and thelaw, a not very memorable footnote to an age in which athletesseem to spend as much time in court as on it.

But to understand any part of this story, you have to understandall of it.

OH. CANADA

There is no analogue in the U.S. for the almost chromosomal rolehockey plays in Canada's national life. It isomnipresent--everywhere and in everyone--at such a molecularlevel that even Canadians who hate the game (and there are afew) understand its nuances. In a nation with so much winter andso much ice, hockey is an inevitability; it is as inexorable asthe weather. In Canada hockey is the manufacturer of goodcharacter. It is myth and science. It is a kind of nationaldream state. Baseball, the only fitting point of comparison inAmerica, has always been optional, no matter what George Willsays. Hockey is to Canada what capitalism is to America: afunctioning ideology.

Hence Major Junior hockey.

MAJOR JUNIOR. JUMBO SHRIMP

There are as many divisions in organized Canadian hockey asthere are diminutives in the language.

Before a Canadian is old enough to lace up his own skates, hehas a league to play in. (Yes, the sport is still mostly aboutboys, although girls' and women's hockey is growing.) By thetime a boy is 10 or 11, it's time for him to start taking thegame seriously. His family should, too, because that's when itgets ruthless. And expensive: Equipment. Gas. Registration fees.Food and a room for those weekend tournaments. If you've gotmore than one child playing the game, better buy a minivanbecause the average hockey bag is now the size of a Lake Louisesummer cabin. And bring a book, because your kids are going tobe playing more than 70 games a year by the time they're 12. Anddon't forget to set aside some cash for power-skating camp nextsummer. Little Pierre and Gump Jr. and Sue had better attend; bythe time they're 13, if they're any good, they're already beingscouted.

At the top of this food chain is Major Junior, last stop beforethe pros. It is made up of 53 teams in three leagues: theWestern Hockey League, the Quebec Major Junior Hockey League andthe Ontario Hockey League. Together, they make up the CanadianHockey League, which advertises itself as the largest hockeyleague in the world. If it is not, it is at least the mostcomplicated.

CHL teams are spread over eight Canadian provinces and four U.S.states (Michigan, Washington, Pennsylvania and Oregon). A fewteams are in big markets such as Toronto, Ottawa, Seattle andCalgary. (The Plymouth Whalers, for whom Jesse played, are asuburban Detroit franchise.) The heart of the CHL beats loudest,though, in small towns, places like Kamloops and Kitchener andKelowna; Lethbridge and Medicine Hat; Moose Jaw, Swift Currentand Victoriaville; Brampton, Belleville and Guelph.

Players between the ages of 16 and 20 are eligible, but the bulkof the CHL is made up of kids 17, 18 and 19. These are most ofthe best young players in North America. They are drafted (yes,drafted) out of the regional or divisional minors at 15 or 16.In western Canada they can be drafted at 14. That's why scoutsstart tracking these kids in utero. According to CHL figures,70% of the NHL's coaches and 65% of its players graduated fromthe Major Junior system, including Gretzky, Lindros and Lemieux.

Young as they are, these kids may move thousands of miles tojoin their new teams. Billeted with local families, they carry afull high school schedule while playing more than 60 games ayear (not counting playoffs) in front of crowds that oftenexceed the population of a team's home town. They practicealmost every day. For this they receive room and board and astipend of about 45 bucks a week. If they choose to continuetheir schooling after the CHL, the teams provide for that, too.CHL folks are very proud of the league's record in educatingplayers, and they resist no opportunity to define Major Juniorhockey as a largely educational enterprise.

Upside, players are being scouted by almost every team in theNHL almost every night they play. Downside, it's tough to finishthat book report on Ivanhoe during a seven-hour overnight busride.

Upside, every team has an educational counselor. Downside, it'slikely to have a boxing coach too.

Upside, players become local celebrities. Downside, they mightmiss the prom because they've been traded.

Upside, this is their best chance to make it to the NHL.Downside, only one in hundreds ever does.

The CHL boasts season attendance of more than six million andpumps nearly $200 million into the Canadian economy every year.The league has more than 1,800 employees. It supervises morethan 1,900 games annually. It has a comprehensive new four-yeartelevision package to broadcast games regionally and nationally.Again, this is amateur hockey, not to be confused withprofessional hockey. In pro hockey the pay's better. And there'sno homework.

UH-OH, CANADA

Any character-building system this elaborate and profitableinvolving young people--children--is going to have critics.Major Junior hockey has plenty. Every decade or so Canadaundertakes to reform its national game. Generally this involvesa series of scathing editorials in newspapers and someself-loathing rhetoric in magazines. Canadians bemoan the stateof the grand old game for a few months, rending their garmentsand tearing at their hair. Then the two-line pass rule ismodified, and everyone heaves a grateful sigh and shuts up.

Whereas in the past it was the quality of the game and theplayers that engendered those cyclical reexaminations, now it isthe nature of the system in which the game is learned and playedthat is coming under scrutiny. The Graham James sexual abusescandal in 1996 arrived just in time for one of hockey's 10-yearcheckups, and the stakes went way up. For those who don'tremember, Graham James was a Major Junior coach convicted ofserial sexual assaults on Sheldon Kennedy, who later made it tothe NHL. (In the space of one week last October, James wasreleased to a halfway house on parole and Kennedy entered rehabfor substance abuse.)

The most immediate fallout from the James case was a hurriedinvestigation of the CHL by the CHL that was later criticized asa whitewash. But the investigation--and the events thatprecipitated it--stirred Canada to take a long look at everyaspect of the business of Major Junior hockey. Toronto's Globeand Mail published a four-part series scalding the CHL for itswin-at-any-price philosophy. It referred to the players as"slaves to a junior hockey monopoly that is run by a gang ofbuccaneers who would do Blackbeard proud." The systematizedviolence of junior hockey and the intractable code of silencesurrounding it were also roundly denounced. Its editorial pagesrecommended scrapping the junior draft and remaking the entiredevelopment system. In addition to being morally unsound andDickensian, it was, worse yet, not turning out very good hockeyplayers. (The number of Canadian players in the NHL has beengoing down steadily, so Canada is losing gold medals and jobs toplayers from Europe whose names read like bad Scrabble racks.)The Globe and Mail also asserted that verbal, emotional andphysical abuse of players occurred because "the Canadian HockeyLeague structure demanded that you keep your mouth shut and doas you were told. Anyone who did otherwise--and to this day,anyone who does otherwise--in Tier I junior hockey in Canadarisks never playing again. Period."

Laura Robinson's 1998 book, Crossing the Line--Violence andSexual Assault in Canada's National Sport, has also been brewingup rancor with its delineation of drinking, brawling, hazing andsexual assault throughout junior hockey. "Violence is thevocabulary" of the game, Robinson says. In November, Maclean's,Canada's leading newsweekly, ran a piece slugged "Thugs on Ice"that looked hard at the manly traditions of goonism and thequick fist.

Off the record you'll hear plenty of horror stories about a Lordof the Flies hierarchy that prevails on and off the ice. Theentire system seems pressurized by a get-tough-or-get-outDarwinism. And it is druidically secretive. "These kids areterrified," says one leading agent who knows Canadian juniorhockey, "but they learn never to say anything to anyone aboutit." Jesse Boulerice may be from upstate New York, but he isentirely a product of this Canadian system.

Major Junior hockey still thrives because it is part of thegolden mythology of Canada. For generations it has been a way torise above a lifetime of bucking bales at the grain elevator inWakopa or Assiniboia or Cut Knife. It is the rural equivalent ofboxing or ghetto basketball, a ticket out. And it inspires asmuch false hope. But even mythology changes when it has to.Major Junior hockey is under a cloud right now, under themicroscope, under the gun. Any business with that many metaphorsganging up on it is in trouble.

WHAT THOSE LAST 2,732 WORDS ADD UP TO

Andrew and Jesse still want more than anything else to play inthe NHL.

WHY FIGHTING IS STILL ALLOWED IN HOCKEY

It is by definition a violent sport. Apologists for the game saythat fighting acts as a safety valve, preventing other, moreserious expressions of frustration with sticks or skates."They're always saying that," says Kevin Young, a sportssociologist at the University of Calgary, "but I'd like to seethe study that proves it. There isn't one."

When asked in a recent Internet poll by the OHL if fightingshould be banned from hockey, more than 85% of respondents saidno. Unscientific, but perhaps indicative.

Fighting is a leading cause of injury in the NHL. It is also agreat tradition.

CLICHES MAKE THE MAN...

Andrew is referred to as a "skills" player, a "finesse" player.Jesse is regarded as a "physical" player, a player with "someskills," a player "who sticks up for his teammates" (no punintended).

...AND NUMBERS DON'T LIE

In four seasons at Guelph, Andrew played in 189 regular-seasongames. He scored 48 goals and had 92 assists. He accumulated 96penalty minutes. In three seasons at Plymouth, Jesse played 150games. He scored 32 goals and had 42 assists. He had 529 penaltyminutes.

THINGS YOU MIGHT NOT EXPECT

Jesse turned down a chance to attend Brown to play in the OHL.He played on two U.S. World Junior teams. He is a regularchurchgoer. His favorite television show is Jeopardy!

THINGS YOU'D NEVER EXPECT

Jesse and Andrew seem like nice young men with a lot in common.Both are right-handed forwards. Both are polite in conversation.No brag or swagger in them--like sitting next to the deacon'sson at a box social. Both are tall and move with thespace-creating assurance that characterizes professionalathletes. The two have similar features and share a smudged sortof handsomeness. Despite his injuries, Andrew's face is stillthe more smoothly engineered. Jesse's face is all broad anglesand worried planes. Pale in the sickroom way that only fictionalVictorian heroines and real-life hockey players are pale, eachyoung man has wavy hair; Andrew's is black, Jesse's brown.Andrew has hazel eyes and a big, terrific smile. Jesse hasn'tsmiled much lately. His eyes are blue. Jesse and Andrew wereborn on the same day: Aug. 10, 1978.

Each has a steady girlfriend. Both enjoy video games. Jesse iscrazy about golf and plays whenever he can. Andrew enjoys golftoo and is starting to play more often. (They are much longeroff the tee than you are.) Each has one sibling and two parentsat home. Both young men were selected in the fifth round of the1996 NHL draft. Andrew went 129th, to the Florida Panthers;Jesse went four choices later, to the Philadelphia Flyers.

People speak highly of them, both as players and as young men.They seem never to have been properly introduced.

They also have in common the fact that each, directly orindirectly, may have shortened or destroyed the other's career.Both suffer troubling thoughts about the future. And there mustbe times, maybe before the morning skate, or after dinner, orlate at night, balanced on the dark edge of sleep, when theyhate each other with a purity and purpose you couldn't begin tounderstand.

PLYMOUTH AND GUELPH

Plymouth, where Jesse played, is about 25 miles west of Detroit.Downtown Plymouth is as small and neat as a hatbox, with giftshops and bookstores and a restored Art Deco movie theater. TheCompuware Sports Arena is on the western edge of town. It isnearly new, and the money that went into it shows. There is alandscaped pond out front, and you can reach one of the arena'sentrances by a bridge that swans across the water. Inside thereare two rinks and a nice restaurant. The 4,300-seat rink wherethe Whalers play is bright and open and has four suites. Thereare a couple of brightly painted concession stands that looklike the kind you'd stop at for a four-dollar hot dog on theUniversal Studios tour.

The team draws a youngish crowd, enthusiastic, with plenty ofpuck bunnies: high-school-age girls wearing cocktail-partymakeup. During breaks, the P.A. system plays the same deafeningrock-and-roll snippets you hear at big league games. The wholething is like a one-quarter-scale rendering of an NHL arena.

The Guelph Memorial Gardens in Ontario, where Andrew played, isa half-century-old barn of a place, like a zeppelin hangar witha rink in it. It is downtown, across from the Black StallionSaloon and Acker's Furniture. The training area is in the oldestpart of the building; one wall is whitewashed stone. (Playersmust feel as if they're lifting weights in a root cellar.) Up inthe rafters, in the dark, is a banner from the 1951-52 BiltmoreMad Hatters of the old Ontario Hockey Association. This rink isthe one where, some say, the phrase hat trick was born. Thebanner may make the trip across the street to a proposed new5,500-seat arena.

The crowd in Guelph is older than the one in Plymouth: lots offormer players, guys thick through the hams and hunkers, withgraying crew cuts that look as if they were done with a beltsander. One codger spends the night roaring like Lear whenever afight breaks out. He's as deaf as a post, but he knows what helikes. Amid the cowbells and the great farting horns, the P.A.plays the same denatured rock, but you can't hear it; the soundsystem isn't very good, so the canned excitement dissipates intothe rafters like smoke.

NEWMARKET AND MOOERS

Newmarket, Ont., is a northern suburb of Toronto. The Longs havelived there for 10 years, in a two-story brick house with bluetrim dropped onto rolling farmland. David and Brenda Long sharethe house with Ryan, Andrew's older brother, and Rudy, aschnauzer. Andrew's bedroom, at the top of the stairs to theright, is pretty much as it was when he left home to play MajorJunior hockey. There is a bunk bed along one wall, and next toit are shelves that hold many of the plaques and trophies he hasaccumulated. He was on skates for the first time when he was four.

David and Brenda are in their early 50s. Brenda works part timein publishing, and David is the president of severalprofessional associations. David is a good-looking man, gone abit gray at the temples. Brenda is a blonde, pretty woman whogets animated when she talks about what happened to Andrew.David grew up in the same neighborhood as Ken Dryden, a Hall ofFame goalie for the Montreal Canadiens and now the president andgeneral manager of the Maple Leafs. They used to play a littlehockey together and are still friendly.

Sitting in their kitchen, you begin to understand what all ofthis has done to them. "Andrew was nearly killed," says Brenda,"and Boulerice gets to go right on skating? It's not fair." Thekitchen table is covered with newspaper clips and Internetdownloads about the incident. David and Brenda both look tired.There have been a lot of interviews and phone calls andconversations since the assault last April. It's late. "I'venever seen anything like this," David says. "He took two handsand swung his stick into Andrew's face."

Do they want to see Jesse go to jail? Brenda answers. "No," shesays, as though measuring the word, "but somebody should take hishockey away from him for at least a year."

On the big-screen TV in the den, David plays the video of thatnight. He has seen it many times. He talks until the momentAndrew gets hit; then he is silent. A few seconds later he says,"I'll never get used to that." Brenda is still in the kitchen.Brenda still hasn't seen the tape. She can't bring herself towatch it.

It's late when you leave, when you've heard all their storiesabout the distant tournaments and the driving and the manysuccesses and the rare failures. About how happy and jokey a kidAndrew is, and about the grind of trying to get organized hockeyto pay attention to what was done to him.

Mooers is in the northernmost corner of New York State, only 40miles south of Montreal. It is farther north than Toronto andGuelph and Plymouth. Like lots of rural towns, Mooers is just afew tattered businesses laid out at a crossroads--the A&L Cafeand Monette's Furniture and Dragoon Farm Equipment. TheBoulerices have lived outside Mooers for 19 years, in a trimwhite farmhouse. It's pretty country, dotted with dairy farms.You can see the Adirondacks rolling away to the southwest.

Mike and Lisette Boulerice share the house with Marie, Jesse'syounger sister. Jesse's bedroom, at the top of the stairs to theright, is much as it was when he moved to Plymouth to play MajorJunior hockey. There's a low bed along one wall and a dresserand a few jerseys hanging in the corner. Leaning on their stocksnext to the dresser are two shotguns that Mike and Jesse usewhen they go bird hunting. There are no trophies or medals;those are across the hall in a little attic space. There is alsoa letter in there from some local schoolkids saying that Jesseis their favorite hockey player.

Mike and Lisette are in their 40s. They celebrated their 23rdanniversary on Valentine's Day. Lisette works for a commoditiescompany that handles grain. Mike works for the highwaydepartment, doing roadwork and plowing snow. He takes extra workdoing construction and welding when he has time. The Boulericesused to run the 148-acre farm as a dairy operation, with 60cows, but they had to sell out a few years ago. "You can't go 15years just breaking even every year," Mike explains. They keptthe land.

Lisette is a pretty blonde who still has Quebec French in hervoice. Mike has curly brown hair. He is meaty through the chestand shoulders, like most farmers. He gets agitated when he talksabout their son's impending trial but doesn't always have thewords to express his feelings.

Sitting in their kitchen, you begin to understand what all thishas done to them. "We think it was a terrible thing," says Mike,"but this kid has had no trouble with the law whatever." Mikeand Lisette both look tired. There has been a lot of bad pressabout all this and a lot of talk around town. "You really findout who your friends are," Mike says. Lisette says she has triedto talk to Jesse about that night, "but he doesn't say much,just keeps it all inside."

What would they say to the Longs if they had the chance? Mikeknits up his face and says, "We're sorry, I guess--we're justso.... I wish we could just get in a room and talk to them...."Tears well.

"How sorry we are," adds Lisette.

It is nearly midnight. You've heard all the stories: Jessedriving a tractor when he was eight, putting in a full workdaylike a hired man. How he started hockey late, at 10, andpracticed out front shooting into a goal Mike welded up himself;about what a good kid he was and is, and how nobody here canmake sense of this. How hard he worked to overcome his latestart. How tough he had to make himself.

You walk out into a night so dark you can't see the keys in yourhand to unlock the car, and you remember what Mike said aboutdriving back from the arraignment in Plymouth: "You cry all theway home. Nine hours. Then you get home, and you cry some more."

THE TIME LINE, PART I

Jesse's stick was most likely traveling between 50 and 75 mphwhen the heel of it slammed into Andrew's face. It probablycrashed into that little groove that runs from your nose to yourupper lip. Doctors and dictionaries call it the philtrum. Theblade of the stick bowed Andrew's face shield back into hisnose, cutting him, but the shield didn't shatter. Remarkably,neither did Andrew's teeth, although he wasn't wearing amouthpiece. The blow fractured his nose and his right cheek anda small bone tucked away inside his sinuses. It opened threecuts under his nose, the longest of which ran laterally and wasthe length of a tall man's little finger. The force of the blowmay have slammed Andrew's brain into the front of his skull,because the contusion that the doctors found on the brain wasjust behind the forehead. Or the bruise may have occurred whenAndrew fell and the back of his head hit the ice, his brainsloshing forward in his skull on the rebound. He was knockedunconscious.

Shane Mabey, the Guelph Storm trainer, got to Andrew first. "Iknew he was in serious trouble," Mabey says. "When I got backthere behind the net, he was curled up in the fetal position andin seizure." After kneeling to assess Andrew's condition, Mabeyjumped up and beckoned team doctors onto the ice. The paramedicsin attendance were taken under the arms by players, lifted andliterally skated out from the bench.

Getting knocked cold slows bleeding, so until Andrew regainedconsciousness, it was mostly a matter of making sure that he wasbreathing and that there was no spinal injury. When he came to,though, the bleeding from the broken nose and the faciallacerations started in earnest. "I had to have my equipment guywipe my face off three times, because every time Andrew breathedout he was blowing a lot of blood," says Mabey. "I had blood allover me. He was sort of blowing it out like a whale. Two feet inthe air."

Head trauma is often characterized by disorientation andagitation. Andrew experienced plenty of both for the next 20minutes. "He didn't really know what we were trying to do forhim," says Mabey. "We had to hold him down to work on him." Sixmen couldn't keep Andrew still enough to get an oxygen mask onhim or start an IV. He was screaming and swearing in thesold-out, now silent arena. "He was yelling 'f---' a lot," saysMabey.

By this time the refs had skated Jesse off the ice with a matchpenalty for attempting to injure another player. He went to thelocker room.

A fan who witnessed the incident and wrote a letter offering totestify in any case that might proceed from it said, "Parentswere grabbing the many young children to remove them from thesight." Several Guelph players admit to having cried on the benchthat night, no small thing in what is often described as thetoughest league in hockey. "We knew it was bad when the coachwent out on the ice," one player said. "Coach never goes out onthe ice."

Andrew remembers only shards of this.

Andrew's parents were at home in Newmarket. In their bedroom theylistened to all this being described on the radio.

THE TIME LINE, PART II

It took several minutes to get Andrew stabilized and restrainedon a backboard, to put a cervical collar around his neck andwheel him off the ice. By the time Mabey saw him put in theambulance, play had resumed. The trainer went into the Plymouthdressing room to clean up. "I looked around and saw that Jessewas sitting beside me," Mabey says. "He was in his underwear. Hewas crying. My clothes were all covered in blood. I remember himsaying he didn't mean to hurt him."

With lights and siren it was a 12-minute ride down to St. JosephMercy Hospital in Ypsilanti. Andrew arrived there Friday nightaround 8:30. Mabey got there around 11:30 and spent the night.When Mabey arrived, Andrew's parents had been called and toldwhat to expect, and Andrew had been stitched and scanned andtested and was out of immediate danger.

Jesse left the arena, perhaps on the advice of the Whalers'staff, and went back to his billet. He changed clothes and metup with his teammates a few hours later for what had become asomber season-ending party. (Plymouth had lost the game and wasdone for the year.) Jesse was still upset. According to RobertEsche, a Whalers goalie and Jesse's best friend, "He felt reallybad about it. It's not like he planned it or anything."

Andrew's parents arrived the next morning, and Jesse was stillasking his coach if he could go to the hospital to apologize toAndrew. He was told not to, that the Longs were too upset. Hecalled Andrew instead. That didn't go well. Neither of themremembers exactly what was said, but it wasn't enough.

By Sunday the 19th, Andrew was ready to be released. Hisperformance on the neurological observation flow sheets andGlasgow Coma Scale tests was nearly normal, and CAT scansrevealed that the bruising to his brain had stabilized. He wastold not to play any contact sports for three months and to havehis own doctors monitor his condition. His parents took him hometo Canada, where he spent a lot of time on the couch watching TVand eating pasta one strand at a time. The long-term prognosiswas good.

Andrew visited his teammates a few times as they made theirpostseason run at the championship. He cracked some jokes in thelocker room, led stretching exercises and saw how his mates alltouched his jersey, which hung by the door, for inspiration ontheir way out to the ice. While watching them play, however,Andrew got very worried. "The game was so fast, so confusing, Icouldn't really follow it," he says. "It didn't seem like I'dever played it."

There is a newspaper photo from an appearance Andrew made inGuelph about a week after he was hit. The crowd has just givenhim a standing ovation. He is smiling as best he can, but theface in the picture looks like a pillowcase full of doorknobs.

On May 6, 1998, the OHL, saying that Jesse Boulerice had "usedhis stick in a most alarming and unacceptable fashion,"suspended him for one year. It meant that he could not return tothe league, which he was unlikely to do in any case, since hewould move up to the American Hockey League at the start of thefollowing season. It was the most the OHL could do under thecircumstances. The OHL has refused further comment on thedecision.

On May 17 the Guelph Storm lost in the 80th Annual Memorial CupTournament to the Portland Winter Hawks, 4-3 in overtime.According to former Storm coach George Burnett, Andrew, one ofthe team's leading scorers and playmakers, might have made thedifference.

That same week AHL president, CEO and treasurer David Andrewsruled that Jesse would be suspended for the first month of theAHL season. Though the AHL and OHL are not affiliated, Andrewshas been severely criticized for not honoring the junior league'sone-year penalty. The assault "didn't happen in our league,"Andrews has said, adding that there was a potential civilliability if his league interfered with Jesse's right to earn aliving. "Under the circumstances, I'm comfortable with thedecision." The AHL is the primary minor league for the NHL. TheNHL has never formally commented on the Boulerice-Long matter.

During the last week of May, David Long called the PlymouthTownship police department for instructions on how to file acriminal complaint. On June 4 Andrew Long filed a formal assaultcomplaint against Jesse Boulerice. On July 6 a warrant forJesse's arrest was issued by the Wayne County ProsecutorsOffice. On July 14 Jesse, accompanied by his parents,surrendered himself to Plymouth Township police. He wasfingerprinted, and his mug shot was taken. Later that afternoonhe was arraigned in 35th District Court and released on a$10,000 personal bond.

Over the summer Jesse was allowed to attend the Flyers' trainingcamp. In the fall he joined their AHL affiliate, thePhiladelphia Phantoms. He practiced with the team but wasineligible for game play until Nov. 15.

Andrew's rehabilitation continued over the summer. He was ableto cycle and work out, but he began skating again only in July.He played some shinny games, practiced with friends in Guelphand felt well enough to go to the Panthers' training camp inlate summer. He joined their AHL affiliate, the Beast of NewHaven, in the fall.

On Aug. 17, five months to the day after he was hit in the facewith that stick, Andrew took the stand in a preliminary hearingin Detroit to determine if the case would be brought to trial.Jesse and several of his Plymouth teammates were there, too, butthey were not called to testify. Andrew identified Jesse as theman who hit him and testified that Jesse had called him the dayafter to apologize. The court's decision at the end of thehearing: "It is a question of fact that the crime was committedand probable cause exists to believe this Defendant committedthe crime. He will be bound over."

A defense motion to dismiss the charges has been denied, and atrial could begin as early as this summer. Jesse has optionsthat would avert a jury trial: alternative programs that allowfor a lengthy probation but no jail time. But they would requirea guilty plea, which is unacceptable to Jesse on principle andwould increase his exposure in a civil lawsuit, even though theLongs express no interest in filing one. "This isn't aboutmoney" has been their assertion throughout.

Precedents in the criminal matter are hard to come by. Elevenyears ago Minnesota North Stars winger Dino Ciccarelli spent aday in jail as part of a plea bargain for whacking Toronto MapleLeafs defenseman Luke Richardson in the neck with his stick. In1969 Wayne Maki and Ted Green of the St. Louis Blues and theBoston Bruins, respectively, were both charged with assault whenthey went at each other with their sticks. Both were acquitted.

Sports and the law coexist uncomfortably in situations like this,the rules of one having little do with the rules of the other.All that's required for a hung jury is one juror who watches thetape and thinks, It's just part of the game.

JESSE AND ANDREW

Trying to talk to Jesse about all this is frustrating. He is aquiet young man by nature, and his attorneys are present to makesure he stays that way. Questions about the incident areoff-limits.

The programs list him at 6'2", 200 pounds, and he's every bit ofthat. He has huge hands--not much scarring on the knucklesyet--that he folds and unfolds while he talks. He freely admitsto having made himself tough to get ahead in the game, but he issurprised how far all this has gone: "I never thought I'd be introuble with the law for playing hockey." He sounds genuinelysorry that he hurt Andrew but seems determined to view it as anisolated incident, an aberration. Has the experience changed himor changed the way he plays the game? "No," he says, honestenough to give his real answer.

When Jesse skates hard, he is all ass and elbows, effort andangles. Off the puck, sizing up the play, he is asexpressionless as a guy waiting for a bus. He is tough to getout of the crease, goes into corners as if he's got a lifetimegift certificate for chiropractic therapy and skates much biggerthan he is. Splitting time between the Phantoms and the NewOrleans Brass of the East Coast Hockey League, Jesse has amassed120 penalty minutes in 36 games. The Flyers consider him to beone of their top prospects.

Andrew hasn't played much for the Beast of New Haven. Becauseit's affiliated with both the Panthers and the CarolinaHurricanes, the Beast roster is large for an AHL team, and icetime is scarce for first-year players. He has been loaned outtwice to the Miami Matadors of the ECHL to get more ice time.

Andrew remains a very upright, fluid skater. At 6'3" and 190pounds, he is nearly willowy compared with some of the bruisershe skates against. He seems to be aware of everything in theoffensive zone and sends passes where they need to be before youeven see the opening for them. Good wrist shot, good slap shot,good nose for the goal. He is a playmaker and has, as they say,all the tools.

The game he's had to play against himself has been the toughestpart. "I almost talk to myself about it, just kind of convincemyself that stuff like that can't happen again," he says of theBoulerice incident. "And I'm not worried about it happeningagain--it's just that...sometimes I ask myself, What if I take abig hit tonight? I try to say to myself, You gotta do it,because I want to play in the NHL. If I'm scared out there, I'mnot going to make it."

Andrew's only ongoing medical concern is his concussion, so hewears a helmet with a little extra padding. It was his thirdconcussion, and he's only 20 years old. When New York Rangersforward Pat LaFontaine retired last season because doctors saidhe couldn't risk another major concussion, he'd had five. He was33 years old. The Panthers have been patient with Andrew andforesee no special problems in his development as an NHL player.

Does Andrew want to see Jesse go to jail? "I don't care to seehim go to jail," he says. "What I really, really want--and Italked to the prosecutor about this--is for there to be aprecedent, some sort of serious probation, and for him never tobe able to lift his stick, or do something even remotely closeto that on the ice. Anything even close to that, like an'attempt to injure' penalty, and he's gone. Never play again.Playing in this game and not being able to bring his stick upwhen guys are coming at him would be punishment enough."

WHAT IT ALL MEANS, PART II

This is a sports story in which nobody wins. The final reckoningwon't fit in a box on the sports page or add up clean in themathematics of a nightly highlight show.

Stories like this drag too many questions behind them. What wasturning in the heart and mind of Jesse Boulerice on the night ofApril 17? Was there criminal intent? Or was it simply iron-manhockey? Does the tape show Jesse sliding his hands up the stick?Did he shift his weight to get a lumberjack's leverage on theswing? And how do you differentiate this act, other than by itsterrifying result, from 1,000 other unseen moments in that samegame, the many small, subtle acts of enthusiastic violence thathockey prizes? What is most surprising about the JesseBoulerice-Andrew Long matter is not that it happened, but thatit doesn't happen more often.

And when it does happen, who bears responsibility? What aboutthe hockey factories that tirelessly promote themselves as"quality organizations" and "builders of character"? If whatthey manufacture short circuits, should they not be heldaccountable? They're always eager to talk in the euphemisms ofrisk, of "role players" skating close to "the edge." But whenthey lose a kid, when the edge crumbles and he falls, you won'thear a word. The code of silence won't allow it, and locker-roomsignage is sparse on the topic of regret. Players spend years injunior hockey practicing to do things right. How much time isspent learning to do the right thing? Is Jesse Boulerice, then,a criminal or simply the product of his elite education?

And what about us, you and me, fat and happy as a couple ofwhorehouse bedbugs up in the seats in our souvenir jerseys,spilling our beer and screaming for brain matter whenever twoguys drop the gloves? How much responsibility do we bear?

Hall of Famer Ken Dryden knows better than most: "We love toturn up the temperature, in part because it means that we go offinto territory we've never been as players, and it's exciting tobe where you've never been. The problem is, where you've neverbeen may be where you shouldn't be.

"Whether it's the motivation of the coach, the chanting of thecrowd, the taunting of the crowd, the rhythm of the music insidethe arena--all of those things are intended to pitch theemotions higher and higher and higher...and then, when somethingreally dumb happens, we sort of step back and say, 'You fool,how could you allow that to happen?' Then we shake our heads andwalk away."

And something terrible has happened.

COLOR ILLUSTRATION: ILLUSTRATION BY TIM O'BRIENFOUR B/W PHOTOS: VIDEO COURTESY OF THE LONG FAMILY People's Exhibit A After tussling over a loose puck in the corner, Boulerice (white jersey) took a baseball swing at Long (black jersey). The ref didn't see him do it, but it was captured on video. To see the videotape of this incident, log on to www.cnnsi.com/hockey.COLOR PHOTO: JOEL SARTORE NHL tough? Boulerice (opposite, and in action last year with the Plymouth Whalers) is known as a physical player who sticks up for his teammates.

COLOR PHOTO: DAN HAMILTON/VANTAGE POINT [See caption above]COLOR PHOTO: JOEL SARTORE Reasonable doubt The toughest part of coming back from the injury is the mental game Long has to play against himself.COLOR PHOTO: BOB ROSATO Board games Long struggled in his return to the ice this season. COLOR PHOTO: JOEL SARTORE First aid When Mabey (above) reached Long, he was in a fetal position on the ice and in seizure. COLOR PHOTO: JOEL SARTORE Home front Boulerice's parents say he won't talk to them about the incident.COLOR PHOTO: JOEL SARTORE Distant replay Boulerice might have destroyed his career--and that of Long (above).

JESSE'S STICK WAS TRAVELING BETWEEN 50 AND 75 MPH WHEN ITSLAMMED INTO ANDREW'S FACE

JESSE GOES INTO THE CORNER AS IF HE'S GOT A LIFETIMECERTIFICATE FOR CHIROPRACTIC CARE

A WEEK AFTER THE HIT, ANDREW'S FACE LOOKED LIKE A PILLOWCASEFULL OF DOORKNOBS

THERE MUST BE TIMES WHEN THEY HATE EACH OTHER WITH A PURITY YOUCOULDN'T BEGIN TO UNDERSTAND

YOU HEAR PLENTY OF HORROR STORIES ABOUT A "LORD OF THE FLIES"HIERARCHY THAT PREVAILS ON AND OFF THE ICE

"I HAD BLOOD ALL OVER ME," MABEY SAYS. "HE WAS BLOWING IT OUTLIKE A WHALE, TWO FEET IN THE AIR"

IS JESSE A CRIMINAL OR SIMPLY THE PRODUCT OF HISELITE EDUCATION IN HOCKEY?

PLAYERS SPEND YEARS PRACTICING TO DO THINGS RIGHT. HOW MUCH TIMEIS SPENT LEARNING TO DO THE RIGHT THING?